NJ Residents In Crisis Find Support Via Mental Health Text Line

NEW JERSEY — It’s no secret that the coronavirus pandemic has been stressful for everyone.

Emergency room visits for people experiencing a mental health crisis have risen significantly, the New Jersey Hospital Association says. Calls to New Jersey’s Children’s System of Care for children needing help have stressed its resources. And a shortage of mental health specialists has left many people wondering where to turn for help.

That’s where Crisis Text Line, a text-based service that provides free mental health support to people struggling or in crisis. It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, across the United States and, through affiliated programs, in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada.

People who need someone to talk to can text 741741 through text, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp to contact Crisis Text Line at any time.

Crisis Text Line launched in August 2013, two years after founder Nancy Lublin received a text message from a teenager who was suffering abuse, the organization says on its website. The goal was to provide help to those in need in all walks of life.

The organization pairs trained volunteer crisis counselors with data science and cutting-edge technology in “a text line that provides rapid, high-quality support to people in crisis,” its website says. It uses data “to triage and prioritize those in the most dire need, rather than based on the order in which they reach out.”

Since its launch, Crisis Text Line has had more than 6.78 million conversations with people needing mental health support, and has trained more than 39,000 volunteer crisis counselors.

In 2020, New Jersey had the highest number of people using the service of any state; only the territory of Puerto Rico had more, according to the Crisis Text Line website.

In addition to trained crisis counselors, the organization has mental health professionals accessible who can evaluate whether someone needs more significant intervention or help.

In 2020, the organization helped 843,982 texters in crisis, exchanging more than 48 million messages through 1.4 million conversations, Crisis Text Line said in its report “Everybody Hurts.”

“There was higher than average conversation volume almost every day after March 16,” the report said. “As the pandemic year rolled on, anxiety remained one of the top two issues in conversations, along with depression. Grief, eating disorders and body image issues also appeared more frequently than in 2019.”

Text messaging allows those using the service to reach out at almost any time and appeals more to younger people who are accustomed to texting.

The report said in 2020, 74 percent of the texters who sought help were age 24 or younger. Kids age 13 or younger made up 13.7 percent of those who sought help through the texting service, and 34.1 percent were teens ages 14 to 17. People ages 18 to 24 accounted for 26.4 percent of those who sought help, the report said.

The demographics of those who seek help are gathered by voluntary surveys; about 20 percent of those who contact Crisis Text Line take part in the survey.

In New Jersey, there were 21,680 people who contacted the text line for help and there were 38,102 conversations in 2020, with anxiety being the top reason people reached out, at about 37 percent. Depression and sadness was a close second.

However, the Crisis Text Line report said the conversations in which texters shared feelings of depression and sadness decreased by 10 percent, and conversations where people expressed thoughts of suicide dropped by 20 percent.

“This trend was also noticeable in the relative drop in conversations flagged as ‘at imminent risk of suicide,’ where a texter indicated they were thinking about ending their life, and they also had a plan, the means, and wanted to make an attempt within 48 hours,” the report said.

The decline in suicides also was seen nationally, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, which showed a decrease from 47,511 suicides in 2019 to 44,834 in 2020.

The Crisis Text Line report said nationwide, its counselors had 26,629 conversations where someone was “deemed to be at imminent risk of suicide because they mentioned they had suicidal thoughts, a plan, and wanted to make an attempt within 48 hours,” and 8,577 where counselors contacted emergency services to intervene.

In New Jersey, there were 99 people for whom emergency services were contacted, and there were another 387 who were de-escalated from talk of suicide in New Jersey, the report said.

If you are in need of someone to talk to or are having thoughts of suicide, Crisis Text Line offers help through text, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Text 741741 at any time to talk to a trained volunteer.

This article originally appeared on the Toms River Patch